Maggie's Farm

Atheists try to grasp the unknowable with their faith in nothing. It gets them no closer to an answer, but they like it. How did something come from nothing? They have no clue, no theory and no interest. Atheism seems to be a very limited religion for the dull, disinterested and lazy among us. To deny what one cannot understand is an infantile response it seems to me. Those who exercise their faith in some form of omnipotent being at least have the advantage of following the best and brightest people who have ever existed and the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Yes, as found in the Bible. For starters. And their faith gets them beyond the big bang into eternity, where it should properly reside. Thus, faith in a divinity embraces and acknowledges the unknowable. An important step in the right direction I would suggest and a more constructive, instructive and realistic place to be in relation to the cosmos and all the things we have no ability to fully understand.

What a delightful reply! Please, do tell me all about those bright ideas the atheists pretend to have. Now, about that 'science colliding with faith' canard of yours. Do you really imagine that science is in opposition to faith? Or do you perhaps believe that science is superior to faith? Both are false arguments. They are false because science is itself a faith based approach/mechanism to help focus our understanding of the world in which we live. Sure, science emphasizes objective evidence and repeatable results but they still call them theories. Theories are beliefs based on some evidence and even more faith. Reading through history books, you will see that faith in the 'scientific' evidence for 'scientific' theories is oftentimes and mostly erroneous. Is light a wave or particle? Where is all the missing dark matter that should exist, but we cannot find? Science does not have the answers. But, scientists have faith that someday far in the future, they will. Faith. It's a belief in something you cannot prove and in something you cannot see or measure. Scientists have faith, atheists pretend that their faith in something they cannot prove is something else. What else could it be I wonder, if not faith? Blind hubris perhaps?

Twisting away from your dilemma by pretending that I have some objection to science will convince only the ideologically pure and equally blind fellows of your faith. Science is not the issue nor is it the problem. But trying to cloak atheism with the credibility of science is. That is a fraud. Science pursues knowledge in a self questioning and testing manner. Science offers theories fitting the best evidence of the day. At it's best. I leave aside the politically motivated theories cluttering the landscape. Al Gore and company. Atheists, on the other hand, assume knowledge they have zero evidence for and yet you defend it as if your whole being were invested in that belief. Yet you have no faith. Too funny by a mile. You say I have no knowledge of science, I say you have no logic.

Earl, your argument against yourself is amusing. But, setting up a straw man and setting it ablaze is easy and I suppose the best you can bring to the topic. Your error, and it pains me to even explain this, is in ASSUMING that my argument about faith included a particularized subset of beliefs in a divinity and church doctrine. A picture you draw from your own imagination, resentments and prejudices. Both you and wirraway jump to a bunch of irrelevant conclusions and then mock your own creation. Silliness worthy of school children. I addressed the issue of faith and the dishonesty of atheists pretending they don't have any in their wholly unsupported theory about God. I merely wish to point out that atheism is a simplistic and rudimentary belief just as dependant on faith as any other. I did not present an argument FOR any particular religious doctrine or claim to speak with a divinity or argue the existence of the eternal soul. Topics a bit out of my depth. However, I'm quite certain the matter of eternal existence, or not, is not the kind of thing we get to choose.

Oh, one more thing. You say I have it backwards, that atheists don't have faith in something that doesn't exist and only religious people have faith. You could not be more backwards. Do atheists believe God exists or not? If not, do they believe it? If they believe it, where is the proof? If there is no proof, what sustains their belief? Only religious people have faith? What utter nonsense. If you take a ridiculous stand on an issue, own up to it.